Yes, but their goverment officials all are chauffeured in Mercedeses or Lexuses, and their people drive Opals or Ford Fiestas. (And an awful lot of the technology for getting oil out of the ground is bought from Western oil companies and companies with oil-field serve arms like Haliburton :-) .)
Hello, Everyone, Big Bad Bob here, from the Garden Of England. I think it's time that you all get the view from my side of the Pond.
I think first things first, we have to say that this has been threatening to come for some considerable time, what people have to understand is that although in the mainstream media for the last decade, it has been depicted that France is the most multicultralist country in Europe (which is absurd!), there has been an severe undercurrant of resentment from those in the Inner Cities and suburbs of Paris, Marseille and Lille that prosperity and employment has not arrived there as well as in the more, dare I say bourgeousis areas of the country. Remember this resentment has come up before. The Paris Metro bombings in the early 90s showed that Race Relations in France were not what the outside world was left to believe.
It has to be said though that the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the continuing threats to both Syria and Iran are also beginning to take its toll on Muslims. The attacks on both London and Madrid as well as the assasination of controversial film producer Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam last year shows that the War on Terror is, as much as I'd hate to say it, is now in our cities, and in some cases are the battleground, as we have seen in France this past week.
What is my thoughts on where we go from here. I don't like the future and the way things are going. Some commentators are saying that the riots across France are in an way an intifada. I like to disagree, but I can't. This has been waiting to happen, and like most things only need a spark to let off the entire factory. With reports coming in of smaller scale disturbances in Berlin and Brussels, this could be the start of something that none of us want to see.
It will be interesting to see how the indigenous populations of certain countries react when they see the cities burning.
Their governors accept western technology in order to swell their riches. Does that put the terrorists against their own governments as well as us, then?